Happily Ever After
by bendingwind
Summary: They tried, just once, to be domestic. River/Doctor, vaguely.


**Happily Ever After**

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* * *

**

They tried, just once, to be domestic. River drummed up false identification, because they chose to settle down in an era that was particularly nitpicky about planetary citizenship, and they rented a flat as Mr and Mrs Orion Melody. River teased him about being Mr Song, and his eyes turned a familiar dark blue-green, and she knew he was remembering Amy and Rory, dead of old age and buried safely in a churchyard somewhere on Earth.

* * *

"_Sweetie," she says, tone more exasperated than sickly-sweet, " You spent five hundred movvs on groceries."_

"_You bought rotten food," he replies. She throws her hands up in the air and, the next day, signs them up for a grocery delivery service._

_

* * *

_

He took to building random contraptions that may or may not have actually served any purpose—River could _almost_ follow his technical explanations—and his creations were rapidly taking over their home. They rented a shed, but he filled that, too. She asked him once why he didn't just get a job inventing things like this, so he'd have a laboratory to store stuff in, all official and whatnot. He shrugged and admitted he'd never liked working on someone else's timetable. She started a company for him, and he refused to build anything at all.

* * *

"_There is a brassiere on my Palindromic Nanoparticle Uniform Dispersal Wave Machine."_

"_So throw it in the laundry, love," she calls from the kitchen. She isn't cooking, of course, because frankly her culinary skills leave quite a lot to be desired, so he isn't quite sure why she's in there._

"_You should have thrown it in the laundry," he yells back, "Look at this. _Look_ at _this!_ You've thrown it off balance, now all the palindromic nanoparticles in the house will be…"_

"_Drifting into the kitchen, I know," she shouts. "I'm—fixing—it—right—now." There is a large crash and then a loud sigh of relief. "There, I've got it. Everything uniformly dispersed, once again. We won't be exploding tonight!"_

"_That's what you think," he mutters darkly under his breath, and he considers, not for the first time, the entertainment value of explosions._

_

* * *

_

Not quite three months after they move into the flat, she finds him in the bath, cold water up to his chin, staring blankly at the pale blue wall in front of him. He doesn't respond when she says his name, or when she touches his shoulder, or when she shakes him. In the end, she drags him out of the water, towels him off and carts him into their shared room. He never even seems to notice what is happening.

* * *

"_Really, I wish you'd kept up that company. I don't like you like this… and, sweetie, why are you frowning?" She reaches out and brushes gentle fingers across his forehead, heavily creased with unhappiness._

"_It's nothing," he says, but he can't meet her eyes. She retracts her hand as if stung, and retreats back to the safety of her chair. Idly, she picks up her fork and plays a little with her dinner._

"_I watched the news earlier," he says, and she jumps at the unfamiliar sound of his voice. "Apparently, someone's stolen the queen's Anthrillian crown. It happens to be her favorite."_

_River grins, a little weakly, and doesn't try to deny that she was involved. He sighs and pushes his chair back from the table, the loud scraping sound unnaturally harsh. He turns to leave._

"_Wait," she calls, and he stops but doesn't turn._

"_Never mind," she says, and he walks out of the room._

_

* * *

_

The sheer volume of expensive, rare and famous things she was stealing on-planet was getting a little bit ridiculous, and a fight over who got to claim what space for their thrill-seeking experiments/stolen objects was imminent. The Doctor wasn't becoming any more talkative, and River was more than making up for it with snark. He stacked a heavy hard drive meant for a Sirian mine on top of a delicate Korelli wrist cuff in an attempt to make room for some odd new machinery, and ended up spending a night in a nasty hotel in the lower city.

He'd started talking again, constantly, but never to her. Always to himself, quite murmuring she could just barely make out.

* * *

"_I'm going off-planet for a few days," she informs him one day, as they're both reclining in comfortable chairs in the sitting room. They haven't spoken a word to each other in three days._

"_I thought we were going to try to stay in one place for a while," he says, and she lets herself bask in hearing his voice directed at her, but only for a moment._

"_Well, I'm going off-planet. You can come with me if you want."_

_He seems to seriously think about it, and she fights the urge to twiddle her fingers anxiously. Someday she will be brash and bold and able to _tell_ him what to do, but she is still young, and still not quite sure enough of their relationship to push._

"_No, I think I'll stay here. I hate space cruisers," he mutters, and the subject is closed. She packs a suitcase and leaves the next day._

_

* * *

_

The Doctor waited three days after she left, and then he packed. On the fourth day, she sent a message.

_I won't be coming back._

He stared at the screen for a few seconds, and then, with a tiny smile quirking at the corners of his mouth, he went into their bedroom, retrieved the sonic screwdriver from the drawer where she had hidden it, and set pace for the TARDIS at what might charitably be called an ungainly run.

Two months later a bit of psychic paper shows up, and he swoops in to rescue River from the authorities once again. They pause for a moment to smile at each other before they have to take off at a run, and nothing really needs to be said.

Neither of them were ever the type to settle down, really.

* * *

A/N: I do know what a palindrome is. I figure palindromic nanoparticles are nanoparticles that are symmetrical along one axis, and since I made them up, that's a good enough explanation. Yes.

~Annmarie


End file.
